T.S. Sivanantham (TSS) has worn many hats over the last four decades. He is now a mentor for students, teachers and educational institutions at Coimbatore.
T.S. Sivanantham (TSS) has worn many hats over the last four decades. He is now a mentor for students, teachers and educational institutions at Coimbatore.
The information technology expert had done his bachelors in mechanical engineering at the popular Thiagarajar College of Engineering in Madurai. TSS was one of the early information technology industry professionals, who joined the sector in 1979 and has had the distinction of having stayed with the sector for nearly four decades.
He was born to Saraswathi and Shanmughaperumal about sixty years ago. TSS has worked for a number of software firms and has hand held couple of startups in India and abroad. This had, kind of, given him an oversight into human resource optimization.
“I began my career with CMC and I am what I am because of my peers and seniors those days. Our managers at CMC would request us to call them by first name or just by their initials for they treated the juniors as their equals. Even now my former colleagues call me TSS.
Thanks to CMC, it was possible for me learn and assimilate a marvellous value system. The career choices within the company was flexible and therefore I could move over to marketing at one stage. Those were the times when we had worked with old IBM systems and at times of malfunction we had no choice but to work at the component level in order to fix the computer. All the installations at the IIT's and engineering colleges used to be maintained by us. We used to handle exams and also the payrolls of private companies during the early times.
A lot of the inputs which were given at CMC molded us into fine people. Most of us benefitted enormously as a consequence of all this therefore I thought that mentoring students and supporting the teachers in the process was the best way to give back something to the society.
The students are the ones who are best suited for the purpose because they are in an impressionable age. The older people will prefer status quo but the youngsters are ever ready to be molded into fine beings. My wife Anu and myself chose Coimbatore because the good- weathered city has been known for its quality education for a long time, " opened up TSS while his wife Anu served a cool rose milk along with a homemade banana cake.
TSS has also worked with BFL ( Bangur Foundation Ltd ) at Bengaluru and spent about 3 years in the UK in order to set up the offshoot of the same company in the west. Subsequently he kick started J & B Software in Chennai which was acquired by 3i Infotech.
Thereafter he created TE Software, for a US based investor and he worked along with this outfit for 5 years. On quitting the IT industry, TSS and his wife Anu kick started their own company ' Ammammas’ which offered items based on millets and seeds to outlets belonging to mostly Browntree in Chennai. Anu Sivanantham happens to be gold medalist in home science from Kerala University. The couple used to manufacture and supply millet Ladoos, millet podis, millet spread, millet sathumavu known as Ayushman mavu, instant puttu etc., and Ammammas supplied goods on order to outlets in places like Pondicherry.
TSS has been mentoring students while working with a few educational institutions. He sits through the class room and gives his suggestions privately to the teachers and managements concerned. He was honest to speak about mentoring and its benefits based on his experiences at the information technology industry, “One thing that I witnessed while recruiting people for the new startups was the big gap that existed between what was expected by the companies and what the recruits were capable of. Technically they were very smart but they lacked creativity and soft skills because of their rustic background. They were unable to think out of the box simply because of the fact that they were just created to pass exams. Because I was involved with only startups we had to be comfortable with students from villages while the so called better ones joined ' branded companies '. Therefore a lot of time was spent trying to make our recruits into smart people with the aid of several training modules. These processes used to be continuous and while soft skills can be acquired the mindset is the one that needs to be molded. These measures yielded rich dividends for the companies and the learner professionals became quite successful. In fact the IT sector was always the best suited for globalization and the professionals were the best from day one because of the global reach. However we are still not using our creativity for we are just maintaining products coming from outside India."
The stories connected with students mentored by TSS are quite interesting. In one of the schools that was addressed by him, the students who had come late for the assembly were made to sit separately in the classroom. As a mentor, TSS brought in a small change and the number of latecomers reduced drastically. All he did was to suggest that henceforth the houses to which the students coming late belonged to would be penalized and therefore the leaders of the respective houses ensured attendance. On another occasion 3 weak students (all boys) were brought in front of a Principal so that they would be stopped from writing the board exams. The kind Principal sought his advice and TSS had suggested that 3 girl toppers from eleventh standard coach and overlook these so called weak boys. All the 3 boys cleared their tenth exams that year itself. He feels that’s its important to make to students pass in exams and in life than by trying to only ensure the success of the institution.
“I attend the classes, observe the teachers and students before giving my suggestions in private. It’s a process which requires endurance. The students have a lot of creativity but the teachers are in a comfort zone. Unless the teacher is willing to walk the extra mile with the student it will not be possible to create a multi-faceted pupil. Students are capable of doing a number of things and they just need an oppourtunity to do so. Practical understanding of concepts does not exist for we are just trying to create exam toppers and unfortunately the reading habits among us has taken a beating. I am basically a risk taker and work away from my comfort zone. Unless you move away from the so called beaten path it will not be possible to move forward. If you ask me why am I doing all this after my active period of service, my answer is simple - I do not want to reach 80 or 90 years of age and feel that I should have done something or that I have just wasted my time. It’s not for the purpose of achievement but for a sense of satisfaction, “added T.S.Sivanantham with a twinkle in his eye.
TSS and Anu are blessed with a son and daughter - Praveen (banker in Australia) and Vaishnavi Sathishkumar (a homemaker blessed with Vidharth and Sahana in the USA). The Nonagerian father in law Nayagam who has rendered a number of spiritual books lives with them in Coimbatore while his parents live in the south.
TSS is ever grateful to his colleagues and the enriching experiences that were gathered by him at CMC, “It was a path breaking career at CMC for all of us. The credit goes to the company and the manner in which it was managed then. The information technology industry experience brought out the ' mentor ' in me. After all it was this sector which gave us an exposure to globalization. Therefore creativity, competitiveness and everything else had to be imbibed in order to survive and succeed in this sector. I am glad that I am able to use my industry experience in the interest of the students along with the teachers and institutions serving them".